Hard Rock Calling 2012 (Hyde Park, London)
Bruce
Springsteen was joined onstage by Paul McCartney as he brought the
second
night of Hard Rock Calling to a close, but their set was cut shot
when organisers turned off their microphones after they broke the
venue's sound curfew. McCartney joined Springsteen
onstage for "I Saw
Her Standing There" and "Twist And Shout",
the final songs in
Springsteen's 29-song set, which lasted three and
a quarter hours in
total. But organisers pulled the plug on the encore while
The Boss and
Macca were trying to address the crowd,
rendering them inaudible, to the
disbelief of the audience.
Bruce Springsteen said he was amazed
when concert bosses pulled the plug
on his performance with Paul
McCartney:
"I wasn't aware the plug had been pulled, and people couldn't
hear
what I was singing. Afterwards I said to Paul, 'I can understand
them
pulling the plug on me, but you? Aren't you a knight?'"
Paul
McCartney remembers: "Bruce, sort of, got in touch
and said, 'Do you
wanna get up? We'd like you to get up'.
I said, 'Well, I don't know,
I'll just come along to the show', so we're in the side
of the show in
the wings, and he says 'Are you gonna get up, man?',
I said 'I don't
know, maybe'. Then his roadie says 'I've got a bass for you,
I've got a
guitar, it's all tuned, it's ready to go'. I go 'Oh, you're REALLY
ready!'.
So they're all really ready to go, so, what have they
rehearsed?
He said 'Twist And Shout' and 'I Saw Her Standing There'.
So
at last minute, I sort of have to say, 'Yeah, I'll do it', so I go on,
and it's great, they really have rehearsed it, and I'm the only one who
sort of doesn't know it, even though I wrote the bloody thing. So then
they go to 'Twist And Shout', and I'm singing it, and someone had
whispered 'We haven't got any time, we can't do it', but it was so nice,
Bruce is going 'Yeah, come on, man' and Bruce is you know, he's a
do-er, a go-getter, so I was happy. 'Yeah!'. We're rocking away, all our
monitors stayed on, so we weren't really aware that the plug had been
pulled on the audience, that you see on the youtube later, it's all gone
dead. And he is singing, he's gonna then go back and sing ' Good Night
Irene', which I think was all dead, but we had a laugh again. You've
gotta have a laugh, it would just be so terrifying if you didn't, so we
just had a laugh afterwards, I was just apologetic like 'I'm sorry, man,
only in Britain!'. It's the only place... You can't imagine in New York
somewhere like that, them pulling the plug, and it got everyone of
course, so that was the big story. Everyone in America was going to me
'Is it true, man? They pulled the plug on you and Springsteen?!', and
I'm saying 'Yeah, well, you know, just some guy. Some bloody
jobsworth...'"
...
...
